Splish! Splash!
Blue water, topped with foam, scented with something floral. This isn’t the ocean, but a tub of warm water, colored by bath oil beads, and serving as home not to fish, but to an orange sponge shaped like a sea-star, and a conch shell dish of pretty soaps. A lime candle flickers prettily on the edge of the tub, making the light move with the water.
And me? I’m the mermaid, clad in nothing but foam, my hair loose, damp, but not bothering me at all. Why tie it up in knots, I wonder, when it’s just as comfortable hanging down.
I flip my feet, my pink-painted toes eerily blue in the not-quite-opaque water. Do I wish for a fish-tail. Only in my dreams.
Image from IStockPhoto.com.
Written for the January Project at CafeWriting. Option 2: Pick Three.
“Race you to the jetty!” I yell and take off without checking to see if Sam is running or not. I don’t much care if I win, I just love the way the sand feels under my bare feet, warm at the surface, then colder beneath, and I love the way the blood surges in my veins as my legs move and my arms pump.
Breathless, the wind and ocean in my ears, face, and hair, I can’t really hear his footfalls, but I can feel his presence a little bit behind me, closer to the surf. Just as in the scene from Atalanta, we reach the jetty together, and sprawl in the sand near the slate blue rocks.
“You cheated,” Sam accuses, his stormy eyes meeting my darker brown ones. He reaches out to tickle me, and I scoot backwards in the sand to avoid his fingers.
“Maybe a little,” I confess, but there’s no shame in my voice.
We are silent for the next few minutes as we watch the tide come in. The sun is sinking, and as the sweat evaporates from my skin, I shiver.
Sam takes off his faded blue sweatshirt and tosses it to me. I pull it on over my tank top, and pull my ponytail out of the neck hold. “Thanks,” I say, and flash him my most impish grin.
He reaches out to ruffle my hair - I allow this - and then something changes, and he’s caressing my face, cupping my cheek in his calloused hand that never smells like fish, even though he works with them all day.
I open my mouth to say something, but before I can speak he’s kissing me, and I’m kissing him, and suddenly, I’m not cold any more.
We kiss for a while, but when the sun has dipped completely below the horizon, we both get up. He captures my hand, and we walk back down the beach, up the stairs to the boardwalk and then across the street, where he has to go straight to get to the apartment he and his mother share, while I have to turn right to get to my grandparents’ old house, three down from the corner.
“So,” he says. “Meet you by the steps tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I say.
We kiss again, in the damp evening air, under the glow of the stoplight at the corner, until finally I have to stop, because there’s this feeling welling up inside me and it might burst.
He senses it too, for he ruffles my hair again, and starts toward home. I watch for a moment, then walk toward the warmth and light of the old house with the wide porch, where my grandmother is waiting, reading a novel by porch-light and citronella candle. She raises one dark eyebrow at me, notes my attire, and lets her lips curve into a gentle smile.
“I was cold,” I say, and walk inside.